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Shadows In Paradise

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It's a little strange to
single out three of Aki Kaurismäki's earliest films as his "proletariat trilogy";
that's akin to roping a few Alfred Hitchcock movies into a "suspense trilogy." The
Finnish director has always made the outcast and downtrodden his people, and
his eccentric, minimalist tragicomedies speak to their struggles and honor
their dreams. Each film in the "proletariat trilogy," now collected under
Criterion's stripped-down Eclipse line, takes a different tack (romantic
comedy, deadpan crime drama, revenge), but all are committed to showing how the
working poor scrape together a living on factory lines, in trash pickups, and
the odd port job.

Kaurismäki's third film, 1986's
Shadows In Paradise, created a solid prototype for many projects to
follow—a short, bleak, yet oddly hopeful and sweet-natured tale that
incorporates a soundtrack loaded with vintage American blues, Finnish pop
music, and jukebox rock 'n' roll. Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen, who would
become Kaurismäki regulars, star as a garbage man and a grocery-store cashier
whose tentative relationship plays out in bingo parlors and ramshackle Helsinki
apartments. Kaurismäki doesn't get too ambitious, but one exchange neatly
encapsulates his sensibility: "I'm not going to die behind the wheel," says a
garbage man with entrepreneurial vision. "Then where?" Pellonpää asks. "Behind
a desk," he replies.

The other two films in the
trilogy find characters actively rebelling against their miserable lot in life,
and they're much stronger for it. 1988's Ariel begins with Turo Pajala
quitting his coal-mining job, closing his bank account, and hitting the road in
a top-down convertible in the dead of winter. When thieves knock him out and
steal his money, the film shifts into a wry take on neo-noir, albeit one
leavened by a sweet relationship between Pajala and a disgruntled meter maid.
(The pair commit to each other forever via a post-coital handshake before they
even introduce themselves.) Better still is 1990's The Match Factory Girl, which again stars Outinen
as an utterly lonely, miserable assembly-line worker who absorbs horrible
abuses from her parents and from a one-night stand who cruelly dismisses her.
Her chilling response has the elemental power of Medea, and Kaurismäki's
purposeful direction smartly drains the film of any color or mirth. It's a grim
punctuation to the trilogy, following the hopeful spirit of the earlier films
with a bitter chaser.